Gaza Terror Flotilla

Gaza's Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh has got the bloody propaganda triumph he was preparing for when he told followers last week that whatever came of the Gaza "aid" flotilla, it would be a win for Hamas -- whether the ships reached Gaza, or ended up in a showdown with the Israelis at sea.

At least 10 people, possibly more, are reported dead, after Israeli forces boarded one of the ships, the Mavi Marmara, to stop it running the Israeli blockade on the terrorist enclave of Gaza. The "peace activists" had advertised themselves (scroll down to point 8 in their "mission" statement) as adhering to "nonviolence and nonviolent resistance in word and deed at all times." This turned out to be a brazen lie. Whatever the "aid" aboard the ship, the "peace activists" were waiting with knives and metal clubs, with which they attacked the Israelis. Though some of the details are still unclear, there are also reports that they made a grab for Israeli guns, and Real Clear Politics -- which has posted IDF video footage -- says they had firebombs ready as well. (Update: more details in IDF footage here).

Out of this came the headlines the organizers of this terror tour had been looking for. All the usual folks are shocked! shocked! that a deliberate provocation, staged with all sorts of planning by the faux-peace-pals of Hamas, turned into a violent showdown. Reuters reports that France is "profoundly shocked," Europe "calls for inquiry," and Turkey's Iran-lovin' Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is denouncing the Israelis for "state terrorism." Washington "regrets loss of life" and is "examining circumstances" -- though the basic circumstances here are no mystery whatsoever. They boil down to Israel being left by its craven Western allies to deal solo with the terrorism that boils out of Gaza, the support for that terrorism that flows from Syria and Iran, and the cheerleading -- and apparently the helping hand -- for this arrangement that emanates from the current Islamic leadership of Turkey.

The United Nations Security Council is of course being called into action. Who's on that Council? Along with the U.S., the 15 members include China and Russia (both busy arming Iran), Brazil and Turkey (brokers of the recent joke uranium-swap deal that won't stop the Iranian bomb), and Lebanon (home to the Iranian-fostered terrorist group Hezbollah, now rearming for its next assault on Israel). This is the crowd that has failed abysmally to contain the nuclear bomb projects of totalitarian North Korea and terror-sponsoring Iran. But in treating the self-choreographed mayhem of the Gaza flotilla as the world crisis of the hour, they have perhaps found a topic worthy of their talents.